
Qass L 

Book 



?93 






A N 




ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

CUT GOVERNMENT, AND CITIZENS OF ROXBITRY, 

ON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF 

ABIJABAM LINCOLN, 

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 
APRIL 19, 1865. 



BY GEORGE PUTNAM, D. D. 



PRINTED BY ORDER 01^ THE CITY COUNCIL. 



City Document. — No. 5. 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEEOEE THE 



CITY GOVERNMENT, AND CITIZENS OF ROXBURY, 



ON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



APRIL 19, 1865. 



BY GEORGE PUTNAM, D. D. 



PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. 



RO'X'BUR Y: 

L. B. & O. E. WESTON, PRINTERS, GUILD ROW. 
1865. 



EHH 






CITY OF ROXBURY, 



In Board of Aldermen, April 24, 1865. 

Ordered, That the thanks of the City Council be tendered to George Putnam, 
D, D., for the very eloquent Address, delivered before the City Council and 
citizens of this city on the 19th inst., commemorative of the late President of the 
United States, Abraham Lincoln, and that he be requested to furnish a cojiy of 
the same for publication. 

And it is further ordered. That the thanks of the City Council be tendered to 
A. C. Thompson, D. D., for an appropriate Prayer; and to Rev. J. G. Bar- 
tholomew for appropriate Selections from the Holy Scriptures. 

Sent down for concurrence. 

JOSEPH W. TUCKER, City Clerk. 



In Common Council, April 24, 1865. 

Concurred. 

FRANKLIN WILLIAMS, Clerk. 




M 



ADDRESS. 



What was mortal of Abraham Lincoln, "President of 
the United States, is at this hour being borne to the 
grave. How are the mighty fallen ! He who but yes- 
terday was the top and crown of this vast political fab- 
ric, the peer of the world's foremost men and mightiest 
potentates, stricken by the assassin's hand, has fallen 
from that great height. Hi^ word of power is hushed ; 
his great heart, embracing a nation in its love, has 
ceased to beat. His body is given back to the dust as 
it was, and his spirit returneth unto God who gave it ; 
and the man who has filled so large a space in the eye 
of the world, has ceased to be an earthly presence. 

The civil and military heads of the nation are burying 
their chief, at the Capital, with such poor earthly pomp 
as befits his station. x4.nd we, who are so far away, yet 
as near as they in love and grief, do join in the obse- 
quies ; we, and twenty millions more, bowing down our 
heads, as one man, in deepest sorrow and awe ; the 
whole land in mourning ; the drapery of woe festooning 
the breadth of the continent ; bell answering to bell, 
and gun to gun, from tower and town and hilltop, from 
sea to sea ; a more than Sabbath stillness fallen over 



all the cities and the plains and the mountain-sides of 
our vast empire. 

Verily, this funeral hour, so observed, is an hour 
filled with a solemnity, a sublimity, and a pathos, un- 
equalled in all the hours that we have lived, or that our 
fathers have told us of ; and such an one as might 
scarcely come to us again though we should live for 
centuries. 

It is an hour to be much observed unto the Lord ; and 
it was meet that we should come before his presence, 
and bow down, and seek his face in submission, in sup- . 
plication, and in trust, if so be the hour might not pass 
away without leaving its blessing. 

Friends, we will not give these flying moments to the 
indulgence of our sorrow, nor to vain attempts to express 
that sorrow. Deep grief does not readily betake itself 
to words ; it rather craves the privilege of silence ; and, 
if forced to speak, it does but stammer in half-thoughts 
and broken utterance. It is the better way for us, the 
more manly part, and the more patriotic and more leli- 
gious, and a worthier tribute to the illustrious dead, to 
hush down the sobs of grief, and rise up into the realm 
of more tranquil meditation ; to remember the virtues 
and the services of the departed ; to study the lessons 
that Providence sets for us in his death ; and gird our- 
selves up devoutly, bravely, for the work that is be- 
fore us. 

I will not cumber this day's brief solemnities Avith any 
biographical detail or careful analysis. All is said in 
two words : Abraham Lincoln was a good and a great 
man. He must have had faults, and he must have 
committed mistakes, for he was a man. But his worst 



enemy, — if, indeed, he had any enemy, except his 
murderer, and those whose system of war, conceived in 
treason, blazing in rebellion, and graced with thousands 
of slow murders in the prison-house, has at last inspired 
the heart and nerved the arm of the assassin, — except- 
ing these, his enemy, if he had one, would not wish to 
have his faults recounted, here, as it were, beside his 
opening grave. Therefore, it is no matter that the 
speaking of these funeral words has fallen to the lot of 
one who has loved him with such a filial, grateful, and 
reverent love, as never to have been able to see any 
faults in him, and who confided in him with such perfect 
confidence as never to discover his mistakes. 

A GOOD man. I catch no voices of dissent on that 
point, and never did, even in those dark days of national 
adversity, when the heart of the people seemed to be 
falling away from him. A conscientious and upright 
man. Just and true in every known act and word of 
his life. Grod-fearing, God-serving ; just and faithful ; 
anxious unto prayer to see his duty and to do it. And 
a warm-hearted man, disinterested, devoted ; tender- 
hearted as a woman, gentle as a child ; loving his coun- 
try with his whole heart, and yet room enough in that 
heart for kindness to the humblest fellow-creature, and 
compassion for every sufferer ; but with no room for one 
malignant or vindictive feeling towards his own or even 
his country's foes. If he could have had a moment's 
consciousness, after the accursed blow was struck, who 
will doubt that the sublime words of the Son of God 
would have been on his lips and in his heart, " Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do ! " 

This conjunction, of so childish a simplicity, so gentle 



and unselfish and tender a spirit, with imperial powers 
and functions, is so new a thing in the history of nations, 
such a strange spectacle to the world, that the world has 
not known what to make of it, and has yet to grow up 
to an appreciation of the unequalled beauty and majesty 
of it. 

A good man, and as great as he was good. I know 
not that I could tell, if the occasion required it to be 
told, just wherein his greatness lay, or where was the 
hiding of his power. 

The eye of the nation was first turned to him in that 
great debate which he conducted in Illinois, some six 
years ago, against an adversary who was regarded, per- 
haps, as the ablest and most skilful debater then known 
in the public councils of the country — Judge Douglas. 
In that debate the great issues of the time were entered 
on fully, and to their utmost depths. Mr. Lincoln bore 
his part in it with such noble candor and self-possession, 
such breadth of views, such clearness and power of state- 
ment, and such masterly logic, that he became hence- 
forth a marked and representative man, and could never 
again become anything less. 

Since that time, whoso has been left to speak of Mr. 
Lincoln in slighting terms, as an ordinary man acciden- 
tally raised to power, shows himself forgetful, or but 
poorly read in the forensic history of the few years pre- 
ceding the war. 

'Many persons make great account of the manners and 
personal bearing of eminent men, and not without some 
reason, for manners are an index of the mind. 

In private circles, in hours of social converse and re- 
laxation, there was undoubtedly in the President a free- 



dom and a homeliness of manner, that showed other 
breedintc than that of courts and fashionable assemblies. 
For he was a genial, humble, kindly man, all undazed 
by power and place, utterly devoid of egotism, and 
almost of personal consciousness, and unaffectedly re- 
garding every man he met as his full equal before God. 
Yet where or when, in any public place or function, has 
he been found wanting in the stateliness and gravity that 
befitted his rank ? 

Our own consummate Everett, himself the embodi- 
ment of grace and dignity, has declared, that on the 
occasion of the funeral solemnities of Gettysburg, where 
were met together on the platform, and at the table, our 
own most eminent men, and the ambassadors of foreign 
courts, there was no man there who bore himself, or was 
capable of bearing himself, with more propriety and 
true dignity, than the President. And Goldwin Smith, 
the candid Englishman, said that not a sovereign in 
Europe, however trained from the cradle for state pomps, 
and however prompted by statesmen and courtiers, could 
have uttered himself more regally than did the plain 
republican magistrate, on that solemn occasion. 

Passing from mere manners, to official words, I think 
there is no potentate nor minister of state living, or who 
has lived in this century, who has spoken so many words 
so terse, so strong, so genuine, that history will make 
imperishable, as has Abraham Lincoln. I quote with 
pleasure the saying, not of an American partizan, but of 
a cold, critical, unsympathizing Briton, respecting the 
last inaugural address of the President, that it is "a 
state paper which for political weight, moral dignity, 



8 



and unaffected solemnity, has had no equal in our 
time." 

Of those intellectual faculties, which have constituted 
Mr. Lincoln's greatness in the administration of the Gov- 
ernment, I can speak now only in the most general terms. 
It was not genius, inspiration, brilliancy ; no man ever 
used those words in connection with his name. There 
was in him the shrewdest common sense, a deep sagac- 
ity, intuitive and almost infallible, though not rapid 
nor flashing. He had a strong grasp of principles, great 
patience of investigation, and a sound, sure judgment. 
These are not the shining powers of the human mind ; 
and yet wherever they are largely possessed, and happily 
combined and balanced, they go to constitute greatness, 
and produce the effect of greatness in any sphere of hu- 
man action. They border close upon the moral qualities ; 
and it has never yet been metaphysically shown to what 
extent high moral qualities combine with the intellectual 
ones to strengthen, enlighten, and direct them, so as to 
produce greatness of thought, action and result. We can- 
not define how far a living, sleepless conscience, a sacred, 
single-hearted regard for truth and right, a fixed devotion 
to a noble end and purpose, a fervent love of country and 
of humanity, an unswerving fidelity to trusts, and a 
devout fear of God, — we cannot tell in what proportions 
these qualities have contributed to set the stamp of 
greatness on the name and life of the President. 

Neither can we so far penetrate the mystery of spiritual 
laws, as to tell how far, or in w^hat w^ay, the spirit of the 
mighty God, who holds the hearts of all men in his hand, 
and by whom princes rule, comes to those who piously 
seek it, and humbly welcome and trust in it, and enters 



9 



in by its secret courses, to inspire, assist, and lead tlie 
Lord's anointed in the discharge of their great and solemn 
function. We only know that the men who have achieved 
the greatest things in any age, have been those who 
have been ready to cry, in such dialect of f\iith as they 
had attained to, Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but 
unto thy name be the glory. 

But what need of these inquiries ? Look at what this 
man has done. He is great in the greatness of that. 
A stupendous work was given him to do, and he has 
accomplished it. Called, in God's providence, to a 
lofty destiny, he has gloriously fulfilled it. Placed on 
a pinnacle high as any earthly height, in the world's 
full view, he has won the world's respect and honor. 
ne came to the Capital, four years ago, and found it 
reaking with treason in all its departments, threatened 
on every side by gathering hordes of rebels, and the very 
roads leading to it lined with banded assassins ; he leaves 
it to his successor, purified, fortified, impregnable as any 
seat of empire on earth ; and not an enemy near it, un- 
less it be another murderer lurking in its dark places. 

Inheriting from his predecessors the seeds and neces- 
sities of a civil war of such vast dimensions and such in- 
tense malignity, he has conducted that war and fought 
it out through weary years, through seasons of darkness 
and discouragement ; threatened with reaction among 
the loyal, threatened with bankruptcy and every form of 
national exhaustion, with foreign intervention, — he has 
fought it out to a complete and final victory. The rulers 
of Europe told him he was trying to do the impossible : 
well, then, he has done the impossible. When he 
took his seat of power, he found the nation drifting 



10 



towards disintegration and anarchy, division and sub- 
division, the abyss out of which could only proceed ruin 
and eternal strife ; and he leaves it compacted in unity and 
power, and more imperial than ever before. The ship 
of state w^as strained in every joint, and crashing in the 
breakers, and the great seas going over her, and the skies 
were bLack with tempest, and the crew was in mutiny, 
and the wisest knew^ not what to do, and the bravest 
blanched wdth fear. Then this unknown and untried 
man comes forth at the call of the all-wise Providence, 
which guides and overrules the choice of men, and, with 
his eyes raised to heaven, lays his firm hand on the helm. 
And behold, now, the goodly ship rides at her anchors, 
and rests beautifully on her shadow ; and he, the 
helmsman, stands confessed before the world as the 
Pilot that weathered the storm. Firm and unwaver- 
ing throughout, whoever else might falter or play false, 
he has crushed the gigantic rebellion. Its power of 
resistance is broken, and on the verge of annihilation, 
and the day-star of peace is rising in the eastern heavens ; 
and behold, now, it is accompanied, as it never has been 
before, with two glorious attendants, — so new, so beau- 
tiful, — namely, absolute and impregnable Nationality, 
and universal Freedom. 

If to have done this is not greatness, what is great- 
ness among men ? If he who has done this is not 
great, who is great among the living or dead of all 
ages? Shall we apply the title great to the man who 
composes a treatise or a poem, who invents a machine, 
who argues a cause, who wdns a battle, or takes a city? 
Truly we may sometimes. But so applying the title, do 
we withhold it from the man who saves a nation ; who 



11 



by the guidance of his mind and the strength of his arm 
raises it up from the verge of destruction, leads it through 
its night of gloom, its wilderness wanderings, its seas of 
blood, and places it at last erect on the supreme heights 
of power and peace and glory? Truly, I think when the 
history of this era is written, and our posterity shall read 
it, and burn, as they will, with the admiration and the 
inspiration it kindles, they will marvel to learn, that, 
in the time of these great events, there was in any mind 
a blindness and narrowness that could so much as raise a 
question of the surpassing greatness of Abraham Lincoln. 

From his work so accomplished, this man, so great 
and good, has gone to his rest, and his great presence 
has faded from our sight. He, the savior of his country ; 
he, who has so watched and toiled for us ; our head, our 
guardian, our best earthly stay and staff, is fallen power- 
less and dumb! Oh, the bitterness of the grief! Oh, 
the immeasurable loss ! Would God he had lived, our 
yearning hearts cry out, — lived, if it were only to come 
forth among his people, that we might throng his pres- 
ence, and tell him of our love and reverence, and weave 
for him our garlands of honor and thankfulness, and call 
down heaven's blessings on his head, and see if we could 
not do something to make him as happy as he was good 
and great. But our prayer is denied, and we must sub- 
mit ; and we will, meekly, devoutly, God helping us. 

And, indeed, apart from the yearnings of love and 
sorrow, rising to the height of calmer thoughts, can we 
not almost see already that God's time is the right time, 
and that this death was not untimely ! He lived to see 
the work assigned to him substantially accomplished, and 
to witness his country's triumph. The measure of his 



12 



fame was full. There awaited him, had he lived, duties 
less arduous, indeed, but harder for his tender heart to 
perform. It needs not a better or a greater man, but a 
sterner nature and a more iron hand than his, to do what 
yet remains to be done. God in his mercy has spared 
him the severe necessities that will soon press upon his 
office. He has gone amid the satisfactions of success 
and the rejoicings of victory, and the loud plaudits and 
affectionate appreciation of his countrymen ; gone in a 
moment, and without a pang, from an earthly joy and 
glory to an heavenly ; ascended into the bosom of his 
God, to whom he had lived so near in firm obedience 
and pious trust on earth. Peace be with him — the 
peace of God, which passeth all understanding ! 

Though dead, he yet speaketh. Though gone, he is 
still here. His memory and influence abide in his coun- 
try's heart forever. 

The visitation, so solemn and sad, while it dissolves 
us in tears, must also arouse us to our responsibilities, 
and brace us to our duties. 

First, not his gentle and forgiving heart, but the 
sacred instinct of eternal justice, implanted in us by our 
Maker, demands, in his name and in God's name, that 
the whole earth be searched, in every nook and corner, 
if need be, for the fiendish murderers, that they may 
make to an afflicted nation and an outraged humanity 
the poor atonement of their accursed lives. Hell is 
agape for them ; or, though God may have mercy on 
them, (which we will pray for,) man cannot. 

And not they only, but the spirit that has bred so 
many enormities, that has so long and in so many ways 
struck at the nation's life, and has only shown its full 



13 



deTelopment in striking down the nation's head, must 
perish. The new President — God bless, preserve, and 
guide him ! — is right. That spirit, together with the 
foul slave system that engenders, embodies, and perpet- 
uates it, — that spirit, which is a murderer from the 
beginning, and forever will be while it survives, must 
be crushed into the earth. Justice is as a divine a prin- 
ciple in God and in man as mercy. An unfit clemency 
to guilty individuals is cruelty to innocent millions and 
to unborn generations. 

Not from the kindly lips and tender heart of Lincoln 
do we derive these stern counsels of duty ; but from 
his gaping Avound and flowing blood do we take them, 
and must heed them. 

The awful duties of retribution rest where they best 
may, with the law and the magistrate : and there we 
leave them — in strong and faithful hands, I do believe. 

And yet there are duties for the humblest citizens. 
We must raise higher, and hold firmly up, the standard 
of loyalty. The country that has been saved to us, 
given back, as it were, from the jaws of destruction, 
must now be devotedly loved, and jealously watched for, 
and guarded by all its people. No more careless palter- 
ing with treason and half-loyalty. North or South. Our 
grand and happy nationality, restored and rehabilitated, 
is henceforth our most sacred trust from God ; and the 
arm that is lifted against it, be it palsied rather ; and 
the false tongue that would profane its majesty by a word 
of treason, or of sympathy with treason, be it struck 
dumb ere it speak. Whoso does not love his country is 
unworthy to live in it. Let the people this day, bend- 
ing in tears over the bier of their beloved chief, let them 



14 



register in their hearts the solemn decree, that they will 
hold their country so dear a possession and so holy a trust, 
that they will not- permit a drop of the deadly virus of 
disloyalty to circulate in its veins ; and that traitors, 
and the apologists and supporters of traitors, must not 
share its blessing.?, nor enjoy its protection, nor so much 
as breathe its air. Tens of thousands of our dearest and 
our noblest have died to save it, and our great chief has 
died because he had saved it ; and shall not we, who 
are spared to enjoy it, — shall we not swear by that 
sacred blood, his and theirs, that henceforth we will love 
it with all our hearts, and live for it, and watch for it, 
and devote ourselves and all that we are and have to it, 
hold its enemies as our enemies, and have no friends that 
are not its friends, and love none that do not love it? 

Perhaps at this moment, while we speak, they are 
lifting up the remains of our noble patriot, deliverer, 
martyr, to bear them from his palace-home to the dark 
and narrow house. In such a moment, of so great 
solemnity and tenderness, let the sacred fires of patriot- 
ism blaze up bright and aloft in millions of hearts ; let 
hand clasp with hand in a solemn league and covenant 
of loyalty, and all true souls renew their vows of devo- 
tion to the country which he loved, and lived for, and 
died for ; and make that country, in its unity, its gran- 
deur, and its peace, a fitting monument to his memory, 
worthy to record his earthly fame, and acceptable to the 
contemplation of his glorified spirit. 



AT THE 

0l tl\$ *'ilx^i '§Hlqun$ cf^^ut: 



I. 

DIRGE, BY THE SAND. 
"Rest, SpipiT, Rest." • 

II. 

SELECTIONS FROM THE SCRIPTURES. 
By Rev. J. G. Bartholomew. 



III. 

Solo and Quartette, . . , Mendelssohn, 

0, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee 
thy heart's desires. 

0, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee 
thy heart's desires. * 

Commit thy way unto Him, and trust in Him, and fret not thyself 
because of evil-doers. 

O, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee 
thy heart's desires. 

IV. 

PRAYER. 
By Rev. Dr. Thompson. 



V. 

HYMN, BY THE CHOIR. 
" Peace, troubled soul." 



VI. 

ADDRESS. 

By Rev. Dr. George Putnam. 



VII. 

SELECTION. 

"Cast thy Burden on the Lord," Mendelssohn. 

VIII. 

BENEDICTION. 



16 S '12 



